Ahimsak Milk and Dairy Products in the US

Non-Violent Alternatives for Milk and Other Dairy Products

The easiest, most effective thing we can do, to stop this cruelty, is to buy or make alternatives to dairy products. With the abundance of choices nowadays, it is becoming easier and easier to remove the cruelty from our diet.

Milk – Use healthy, cholesterol-free soy milk, rice milk, oat milk, hemp milk or almond milk of various brands like Silk, Westsoy, 8th Continent, Rice Dream, 365, or Pacific Foods. Fortified, and available in many flavors, they can be found in nearly every major grocery store. To make almond milk or other nut milks, all you need is soaked almonds, a blender and a sweetener if you choose. Coconut milk makes a rich dessert and can be consumed by those without heart disease risks, as the saturated fat does turn into cholesterol in one’s body.

Yogurt– Cashew, soy, almond and coconut based yogurts are also available. With non dairy cultures available online or in some stores such as Whole Foods you can make your own. For Indian kadhi, you can use a limdu leaf or other sour flavoring if you don’t have vegan yogurt handy.

Cheese and Butter – While there are many brands of non-dairy butter, watch out for palm oil. The production of palm oil has killed monkeys and other animals that used to live in the forests that were cut down and burned. Daiya brand vegan cheeses melt as well as any dairy cheese. Other high end vegan cheese brands, such as Miyoko’s, are proliferating! The “Un-cheese Cookbook” and Artisan Vegan Cheese show you how to make your own non-dairy cheese. We were able to make cashew cream cheese at home very simply while living in India. Tofu is a convenient and nutritious ingredient that you can use in place of paneer.

Indian and Jain Cooking– Among the many vegan cookbooks covering a variety of cuisines, there are at least two that focus on vegan Indian cooking. Check out veganricha.com or the vegan part of vegetarian gastronomy for some recipes! Check out Pramodaben Chitrabhanu’s Rainbow Food for the Vegan Palate!

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2 responses to “Ahimsak Milk and Dairy Products in the US”

http://www.jainvegans.org/alternatives-to-dairy/ This says that the ghee brands Khanum, KTC, and Pride are vegan, but are there any others? I’ve never seen any of those brands here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, but I’ve seen Dalda and Aseel vanaspatis. I see “vitamin D” on their ingredients list, but it doesn’t specify whether it is D3 or D2. D2 is (always?) vegan, whereas D3 is usually not vegan, though rarely it can be sourced from lichen or mushrooms I’ve heard. Is there a low trans-fat version? If not, then I think I’ll just leave it in my cupboard for a few weeks to display it to my roommate. I try not to buy the same item more than once, because I want to show off the diversity of vegan foods available as much as I can. My roommate is a lacto-vegetarian who had never even heard of veganism until she met me. She is a Punjabi Sikh. She had a non-arranged marriage and is divorced now. I am a white straight Canadian agnostic vegan woman whose grandparents were all born in Canada (I even have some great-great grandparent(s) who were born in Canada). So, because she mostly eats only Indian food, I think I should display some Indian vegan foods in my section of the cupboard in our shared kitchen. She has two kids, both girls, ages 7 and 9. They are lacto-vegetarian also. I was thinking of purchasing the two vegan cookbooks by Anupy Singla and Anuradha Sawney and leaving them somewhere before they kick me out (they are moving to a bigger house) or if I go back to my hometown. I might also leave a copy of “Cowspiracy” and have a sticker on the front cover that says “Has Hindi subtitles!” because her kids told me she watches Hindi Bollywood movies. The kids weren’t good at answering my questions, I think they were unsure themselves, so I don’t know if she can read Urdu or Shamukhi script or Gurmukhi script or even in Hindi. If Aseel and Dalda are not vegan, do you have any brands you can recommend that I could order and pick up at the UPS store or Post Office?

I don’t about the brands you mention as i don’t use vanaspati ghee. Being more health oriented than traditional in my cooking and having the perspective of a nutritionally minded doctor, I’d advocate organic cold pressed canola oil for most uses with occasional coconut oil when you need a solid fat. How did your advocacy efforts go? Kudos to you and sorry for the late reply!